1 . I turned 8 years old the day I skipped school for the first time. It was easily done: Both my parents left for work before my school bus arrived on weekdays, so when it showed up at my house on that cold winter morning, I simply did not get on. The perfect crime!

And what did I do with myself on that glorious stolen day, with no adult in charge and no limits on my activities? Did I get high? Hit the mall for a shoplifting extravaganza (狂欢)?

Nope. I built a warm fire in the wood stove, prepared a bowl of popcorn, grabbed a blanket, and read. I was trilled and transported by a book — it was Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises — and I just needed to be alone with it for a little while. I ached to know what would happen to Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley and Robert Cohn. I couldn’t bear the thought of siting in a classroom taking another exam when I could be traveling through Spain in the 1920s with a bunch of expatriates (异乡客).

I spent that day lost in words. Time fell away, as the room around me turned to mist, and my role — as a daughter, sister, teenager, and student — in the world no longer had any meaning. I had accidentally come across the key to perfect happiness: I had become completely absorbed by something I loved.

Looking back on it now, I can see that some subtle things were happening to my mind and to my life while I was in that state of absorption. Hemingway’s language was quietly braiding itself into my imagination. I was downloading information about how to create simple and elegant sentences, a good and solid plot. In other words, I was learning how to write. Without realizing it, I was hot on the trail of my own fate. Writing now absorbs me the way reading once did and happiness is their generous side effect.

2 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

Catherine was the coolest kid in her class. Whenever she went, she was in the spotlight, with a bunch of kids following her and doing everything she did.

Her deskmate, Landy, however, was not in the cool kids’ group. Being the tallest kid in her class, she was teased by her classmates, who were always chanting “Landy, Landy, long as spaghetti (意大利面 )”. Every time Landy heard those silly chants, she could feel her face burst into flames. God knew how she wished the ground to crack and swallow her!

Catherine didn’t really like it when the kids chanted “Landy, Landy, long as spaghetti”. But she never told them to stop either, and nor did she ever talk to her. She liked being popular.

One weekend, Catherine went over to her grandfather for Thanksgiving. Her grandfather lives on a farm at the opposite end of town, where he keeps chickens. While helping to feed the chickens, Catherine noticed a peculiar one. Curling in the corner, it looked smaller than the others and was almost half-bare!

“What’s the matter with it?” She asked her grandfather, with a puzzled frown on her face. Her grandfather told her how chickens could act. “They have a pecking (啄) order,” he explained, wrinkles of concern spreading around his forehead. “If one chicken is different, the others will push it away and keep pecking it. Sometimes they peck it so much that it dies.”

“Oh, what a poor little thing!” Catherine let out a sigh as she scooped the frightened chicken up in her arms, whose heart was beating fast in the bony little body. Suddenly, she thought of Landy, the girl being “pecked” by her classmates. “I’m going to take it home and take good care of it,” she said with a determined look.

Back in school, Catherine told the cool kids about the chicken. “It’s looking healthy,” she said proudly. “It’s fatter and its feathers are growing. Even the cat likes it. She carries it around the garden, and...” Everyone was entertained by Catherine’s story of her lovely chicken, laughter lingering around the classroom.

注意：1.续写词数应为 150 左右；2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

Paragraph 1. Then Catherine spotted Landy sitting by herself in a corner.

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Paragraph 2. But Catherine walked directly toward Landy, regardless of what they said.

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A small village in Yunnan Province is     1     (wide) known as the Dai paper factory. There are nets for     2     (dry) paper all over the village and inside villagers’ houses. Dai paper     3     (make) for over 800 years there up to now.

One of the best papermakers is Yan, who was already interested in Dai paper at an early age.     4     the guidance of his grandparents at 16, Yan was quickly able to complete     5     production independently.

Unlike ordinary papermaking where trees need to be cut down, Dai paper is environmentally friendly. This is     6    its raw material is the recyclable bark of a kind of trees unique to the area. Dai paper’ production process is still used today. In a workshop, Yan demonstrated 11 different papermaking     7     (process) to us.

Although Dai paper carries the culture and     8     (believe) of the Dai people, the crafting of it is faced with great challenges.     9     (address) the problems, Yan improved Dai’s papermaking technology, thus saving production time and reducing labor costs. And then he     10     (start) teaching the villagers his new papermaking process for free.

4 . Loneliness is significant mental health concern and can raise risk of death by 45% and contact with nature in cities significantly reduces feelings of loneliness, according to a team of scientists.

The study is the first to assess how the environment can affect loneliness. It used real-time data, collected via a smartphone app, rather than relying on people’s memory of how they were feeling.

The research found that feelings of overcrowding increased loneliness by an average of 30%. But when people were able to see trees or hear birds, feelings of loneliness fell by 28%. Feelings of social inclusion also cut loneliness by 21％ and when these feelings coincided(巧合) with contact with nature, the beneficial effect was boosted by a further 18％.

The findings pointed to interventions to reduce loneliness. The researchers said, “Specific measures that increase social inclusion-and contact with nature should be taken, especially in thickly populated cities.” Time spent in nature is known to boost well-being, with woodland walks estimated to save the UK at least ￡185m a year in mental health costs, for example.

The research collected data from urban citizens across the world using the Urban Mind search app. More than 750 people provided 16,600 of these assessments. The participants were self-selecting and so it did not provide a representative sample of the wider populations. But when the researchers took age, education, and occupation into account, the benefits of nature contact and feelings of social inclusion on loneliness remained strongly statistically significant. Johanna Gibbons, part of the research team, said, “Cities are probably the only habitat that is increasing at a high rate. So we should be creating urban habitats where people can thrive(兴旺).”

5 . In 2019, the world generated 54.6 million tons of e-waste. However, just 17.4 percent of it was formally collected and recycled. Since 2014, the amount of e-waste recycled has grown by 1.8 million tons—a relatively small amount, considering that the amount of e-waste generated increased by 9.2 million tons in the same period.

Global reserves of some elements, such as platinum, are supposed to be fully used up within 15 years if the proportion of recycled stocks entering production doesn’t increase. E-waste and EV batteries are currently recycled through processes called pyrometallurgy (火法冶金术) and hydrometallurgy (湿法冶金术). However, they involve burning temperatures with a high energy demand and deep carbon footprint, and poisonous chemicals which are harmful to the environment. Alternatives are therefore being sought.

A team of scientists from the University of Coventry are extending one such alternative. They have been using non-poisonous bacteria to oxidize and recover the precious metals—a process known as “bioleaching”. They have shown that copper is widely recoverable from e-waste, and that all metals present in EV batteries can be recovered by using microbes (微生物). If extended, bioleaching facilities would mean that manufacturers of EV batteries and other electronic goods would be able to recover metals locally, relying less on costly exports to recycling centers abroad.

“At present, a key limitation for e-waste recycling is the lack of certification detailing the types and amounts of metals contained in electronic goods. But with an efficient recycling process appearing, manufacturers have the motivation to use more recycled material in their products, which will change the very design of electronics goods. It’s about closing the loop of a product’s life cycle,” said the leader of the Bioleaching Research Group, Sebastien Farnaud.

Ultimately, bioleaching technology is born out of the idea of creating a truly circular process for the things that we consume. We need to shift from a mindset and economy where we see waste as an end product, to one where there isn’t even a start or an end at all.

Regards,

Li Hua